There are clearly a lot more great use-cases for Docker, but I can’t help but feel like it’s being thrown into architectural layer cakes and markitectures as a substitute for the non-words “cloud”, “amazing” and “revolutionary.”

How do I distinguish hot from hype? I look for places where Docker is solving just one problem set instead being a magic wand solution to a raft of systemic issues.

Places where I think Docker is potent and disruptive

Creating a portable and consistent environment for dev, test and delivery

Packaging is still tricky: Creating a locked box helps solve part of downstream problem (you know what you have) but not the upstream problem (you don’t know what you depend on).

Container sprawl: Breaking deployments into more functional discrete parts is smart, but that means we have MORE PARTS to manage. There’s an inflection point between separation of concerns and sprawl.

PaaS Adoption: Docker helps with PaaS but it does not solve neither the “you have to model your apps for a PaaS” nor the “PaaS needs scalable data services” problems

Speaking of Miley Cyrus, it’s not the container that matters, but what’s on the inside. Docker can take a lesson from Miley: attention is great but you’ve still got to be able to sing. I’m not sure about Miley, but I am digging the tracks that Docker is laying down. Docker is worth putting on your play list.

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About Rob H

A Baltimore transplant to Austin, Rob thinks about ways of building scale infrastructure for the clouds using Agile processes. He sat on the OpenStack Foundation board for four years. He co-founded RackN enable software that creates hyperscale converged infrastructure.